Social risk-management strategies in pastoral systems: A qualitative comparative analysis

Pastoralists risk losing their livelihood overnight due to drought, disease, and other disasters. They employ different strategies to minimize these risks, including the following: Mobility, herd maximization, diversification, and social strategies. Social strategies are considered critical because they provide not only a safety net during disasters but also contribute to the resilience of pastoral societies by allowing pastoralists to rebuild herds after disasters. There is, however, much variation in social risk-management strategies (SRMS) across pastoral societies. To understand this variation, we conducted a comparative study of 20 pastoral societies from different socioeconomic, historical, and environmental settings. We used Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to examine which causal configurations explain the variation in SRMS. This analytical approach helped us to identify four clusters of pastoral groups, in which different causal configurations are associated with exchange networks, patron-client relations, and noninstitutional SRMS.